Sins Of The Fathers

In addressing the Anglican Bishops and senior clergy at Church House, Westminster in February 1915, the Archbishop of Canterbury stated the old justification that he did not “entertain any doubt that our nation could not, without sacrificing principles of honour and justice more dear than life itself, have stood aside and looked idly on the present world conflict.’ [1] He was repeating, almost word for word, Sir Edward Grey’s statement of 3 August 1914. The concept of a Christian duty to fight was virtually universal among the Anglican clergy. Few if any said otherwise from within the ranks of the Church of England. Given such unanimous support for the war by even the most liberal of Anglicans, it is not surprising that the pulpit became an adjunct for the recruiting office. The Archbishop went so far as to state that it was their sacred privilege to bid men ‘to respond ungrudgingly to their country’s call’. [2]

Ponder these words for a moment. Young men, sitting in quiet country churches or great gothic cathedrals were exhorted to go to war, to do their duty, to accept the sacrifices. Their emotions were constantly battered by sermons drawn from the Old Testament that extolled the wrath of an avenging God. How did they feel when the pastoral shepherd dropped the mantle of Christ the Peacemaker and became a bitter recruiting sergeant? Priests and Pastors would often stress duty and equate fighting for Britain and the Empire with fighting for Christ. [3] Others railed against cowardice. The master of St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge said of those who refused to volunteer,

‘It is a pity that we cannot brand that sort of man “Made in fear of Germany.” Would to God we had known when they were born that they would eat our bread and grow and live amongst us, trusted and approved, and yet cowards. We need not have prayed and worked for them.’ [4]

Can you imagine hearing your own brother or son described in such outrageous terms? With what sense of self worth would a young man be left, who internalised these damning words? It was moral blackmail of a nefarious kind.

In the early months of the war a further disconcerting practice of church recruiters was to appeal to the female relatives of potential recruits to take up the cause at home. Men who had not enlisted were ridiculed in the street by middle-class women inspired from the pulpit to taunt and embarrass them into the recruitment centre. At the same time, parents whose sons had enlisted were praised, and bathed in their reflected glory until the true nature of the war was revealed in the lists of dead and missing.

But the most outrageous proponent of the ‘virtuous war’, the prelate who stepped well over the line of Christian decency was the Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram. He was an Oxford man who worked hard for the poor in the East End of London and was consequently popular with the people of Bethnal Green. With the blessing of Lord Salisbury in 1901, Winnington-Ingram was appointed to the Bishopric of London and enthroned at St Pauls Cathedral where he remained for thirty eight years. [5] He was one of the most outspoken and patriotic advocates of the war, beloved by the War Office and the Admiralty, who feted him on his visits to front line troops and naval installations.

Winnington-Ingram claimed to have added ten thousand men to the armed services with his sermons and other recruiting crusades. He made no estimate of how many died or were maimed needlessly because of his work for God and country. As Bishop of London, he never shrank from the enthusiastic endorsement of the righteousness of the war and the British cause and the important role the Church of England must play in the whole affair. His favourite text was; ‘better to die than see England a German province’. In return, he was given the second highest award for chivalry for his war service by King George V  who appointed him Knight Commander of the Victorian Order, [6]

Winnington-Ingram’s pronouncements veered from the concerned to the banal. Speaking at a ‘Rally without Shame’ at Westminster Church House in February 1915, he said that the Church had to foster and increase the fortitude of the nation; to comfort the mourners and inculcate a happier and brighter view of death. [7] What  did that involve? Cheer up, your only son is dead? Don’t get too upset; it was all in a good cause? His concept of comforting the mourners did not extend to the enemy. It was an odd kind of Christianity. Winnington-Ingram will long be remembered for words of a very different kind.

 After a year of war, the Bishop called for the men of England to

“band in a great crusade -we cannot deny it- to kill Germans. To kill them, not for the sake of killing, but to save the world; to kill the good as well as the bad; to kill the young men as well as the old, to kill those who have showed kindness to our wounded as well as those fiends who crucified the Canadian sergeant, who superintended the Armenian massacres, who sank the Lusitania… and to kill them lest the civilisation of the world should itself be killed.” [8]

Apologists have claimed that these words have been taken out of context, but it is difficult to imagine any context at all in which they could comfortably sit. Dress these words any way you can but they will still reflect a blood-thirsty crusade against Germany. Winnington-Ingram went further by adding, ‘as I have said a thousand times, I look upon it as a war for purity, I look upon everyone who dies in it as a martyr.’ [9] British, of course; one can only assume that Germans went to hell. This is a theme he returned to time and again. He wrote in his sermons, ‘this nation has never done a more Christ-like thing than when it went to war in August 1914…the world has been redeemed again by the precious blood shed on the side of righteousness.’ [10] In words that have been repeated to spur the modern-day jihadist, Bishop Ingram invoked the God of war.

He was also ready to absorb every word of anti-German propaganda and repeated stories of atrocities without caution. His reference to the crucified Canadian soldier was one such myth that circulated early in the war. It was a vicious lie wrapped in fear and loathing to inspire vengeance. Propaganda was an important source for the tales of unforgivable German wickedness the Churches were willing to perpetuate. Clergymen of all faiths became both participants in and victims of propaganda. Many Anglican ministers found it hard to believe that civilized Germans could be responsible for the atrocities claimed in the initial stories. However, the burning of Louvain and especially the university library, the horrors of the Bryce Report [see blog of 10 September] and the sinking of the Lusitania were all instrumental in changing their minds. Once their faith in German civilization had been breached, nearly every atrocity story in circulation was accepted and transmitted to their flocks. [11] They took their texts from a different Bible, one written by the propagandist at Wellington House or an unnamed journalist from the Northcliffe stables.

Perhaps the last word should go to Brigadier-General F P Crozier, who wrote in his book, ‘A Brass Hat in No-Man’s Land’:  ‘The Christian churches are the finest blood-lust creators which we have, and of them we made free use.’

[1] The Times, 10 February 1915, page 5.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Kevin Christopher Fielden,, “The Church of England in the First World War.”
[4] C.H.W. Johns, “Who is on the Lord’s Side?”  Sermons for the Times  no. 9 (1914), p.14.
[5] Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Jeremy Morris, ‘Ingram, Arthur Foley Winnington [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36979.
[6] Marrin, Albert. The Last Crusade: The Church of England in the First World War. p.181.
[7] The Times 10 February, 1915, p.5.
[8] Annette Becker, A Companion to World War 1, pp., 237-238.
[9] Winnington-Ingram, The Potter and the Clay, p. 42.
[10] Ibid., p. 229.
[11] Fielden, , “The Church of England in the First World War. p.42.

The Judas Kiss

In a spirit of reconciliation and humility there is great cause for the Church of England to reflect on its behaviour during the war, and apologise. Not since Jesus was betrayed in Gethsemane has Christianity been so wilfully sold out.

If the Church of England was ‘the Conservative Party at prayer’, [1] the most senior prelates and professors of divinity who headed that Church represented the Secret Elite in conclave. Promoted and championed by inner-circle power brokers like the Earl of Roseberry, the men who in August 1914 hailed the ‘Holy and Righteous War’ [2] owed their allegiance to God, All Souls, Oxford and the Secret Elite, though not necessarily in that order. They saw their role as teachers and leaders, to state the given causes for the war, to explain the meaning of the war, to maintain morale on the home front and to remind the public that the primary obligation of young men was to enlist. [3] In other words, it was Germany’s fault, Britain had to save civilisation, the war had to be seen through no matter the sacrifice and it was every man’s duty to serve.

Before examining the role of the Church of England from 1914 onwards, we should understand that its political power rested both with a select section of the chosen hierarchy and with the Prime Minister and senior members of the House of Lords who appointed them. The C. of E. was represented in the House of Lords by the two archbishops, York and Canterbury, the bishops of London, Durham, and Winchester, and 21 diocesan bishops in order of seniority.  It was a system steeped in English history, a by-product of Henry Tudor’s reformation. The real control of the Church had once rested with the Crown but had been slowly transferred to Parliament between the fifteenth and seventeenth century. The Prime Minister appointed bishops, though they had to be approved by a ‘cathedral chapter’ or council of high church officials, [4] a strange anachronism given that a Presbyterian such as Campbell-Bannerman, or the Welsh non-conformist, Lloyd George, could be involved in the process of election.

The Church of England was the religious preserve of the middle and upper classes, with its ministry drawn from university graduates, traditionally from Cambridge and Oxford. [5] In the very class-conscious world of pre-war Britain, it aimed to place an educated gentleman in every parish church across the kingdom [6] which aligned well with John Ruskin’s philosophy of a ruling class oligarchy, but alienated many working class Christians. Indeed, the vast majority of Anglican churchmen were openly hostile to Trades Union and labour movements and they feared the social unrest which was assumed to accompany them.

On the eve of what might have been the first general strike in England, William Randolph Inge, the Dean of St. Paul’s, summed up the alarm felt by his associates when he ‘denounced the unions as criminal combinations whose leaders deserved to be executed as rebels against society.’ [7] This was the same Dean Inge who profited from the war while extolling it as God’s work. His lucrative shareholding in Vickers Ltd was not unusual. A roll-call of Bishops who invested in the armaments firms like Vickers Ltd., Armstrong-Whitworth Ltd. or John Brown and Co., included the bishops of Adelaide, Chester, Hexham, Newcastle and Newport. [8]

There can be no question about the Secret Elite pedigree of the most important Anglican clerics in August 1914. [9] Cosmo Gordon Lang was recruited from All Souls by Lord Roseberry, and enjoyed a meteoric rise through the ranks of the church. His parish work in Leeds was followed by a quick promotion to Dean of Divinity at Magdalen College in Oxford. Cosmo Lang became the suffragan (assistant) Bishop of Stepney from which comparatively lowly post he shot to the Archbishopric of York in 1908.

At the invitation of prime minister Herbert Asquith, it took Lang a mere 18 years to rise to the second most esteemed office in the Anglican Church. He decreed that the war was ‘righteous’ [10] and was supported in this by all of his fellow Bishops.  Another influential cleric, the Dean of Durham, Henley Henson was similarly an All Souls man. His War Times Sermons, published in 1915, extolled the allied cause and by 1918 he was controversially installed as the Bishop of Durham and therefore became a Member of the House of Lords. The interlocking association between the Church of England hierarchy and the Secret Elite was again demonstrated in the elevation of the Editor of the Church Quarterly Review, Arthur Cayley Headlam, a fellow of All Souls for around forty years, to the professorship of Divinity at Oxford. He was later to be appointed Bishop of Gloucester. Headlam’s brother was deeply involved with Viscount Alfred Milner and took charge of the Department of Information during the war. The links go ever on. A.L. Smith, inner core member of Secret Elite, produced a number of pamphlets including The Christian Attitude to War.  It basically encouraged Christians, like himself, to put aside the teachings of the New Testament and the Prince of Peace, and give their all to the war effort

When war was declared the Oxford Dons amassed an extensive 87 pamphlet assault on every aspect of learned justification to ‘prove’ German guilt. This was met by a heartfelt cry from German theologians to American newspapers that a systematic network of lies emanated from Britain to blame Germany for the war to the extent that they denied the right of Germans to invoke the assistance of God. Ah, there we have it; God was an Englishman. The pamphlet, To Christian Scholars of Europe and America; A Reply from Oxford to German Address to Evangelical Christians by Oxford Theologians published on 9 September 1914, was a perfect example of the extent of Secret Elite influence. They immediately enlisted 14 theologians at Oxford, including five professors of divinity, to write the above named pamphlet dismissing the claims from German theologians as nonsense. The Oxford ‘Divines’ condescendingly admonished the Germans for failing to study the events that led up to the war and concluded, ‘Will not the Christian scholars of other lands share our conviction that the contest in which our country has engaged is a contest on behalf of the supreme interests of Christian civilization.’ [11] Consider the arrogance and self-glorification of this argument. Oxford could pronounce that Germany had no right to ask God’s blessing on their war, had failed to study the true causes of the war or the political ‘utterances’ of their own countrymen, while Britain and the Empire were fighting for the ‘supreme interests of Christian civilisation’. The supreme interests for which British soldiers were sacrificed were those of the bankers, financiers, armaments producers, politicians and charlatans who comprised the Secret Elite.

A commonly repeated theme among Anglican leaders was exemplified in a sermon given by Cosmo Lang in October 1914. Archbishop Lang alluded to the German philosopher Nietzsche and the common British interpretation of his writings to conclude that ‘might makes right.’ He insisted ‘there could be no peace until this German spirit had been crushed” and thus paradoxically appealed to ‘friends of peace… to be supporters of our war’. [12] Note the language. German spirit had to be crushed; not beaten, crushed. It is interesting to note that those who took a stance against the war were few in number and drawn from ‘an important cluster of socialists, Liberals [and] philosophical pacifists,’ while there was virtually a total lack of resistance to the war by any vicar of the Church of England. [13] Indeed not. Time and again church leaders denied the very basis of Christian teaching, discarded the tenet of man’s conscience and denied that objection to the war was an acceptable stance for any Christian. They followed the Bishop of Oxford’s blunt message: ‘I do not hold the views of those who are seeking exemption to military service on the grounds of conscientious objection to war under any circumstances.’ [14] Amen.

[1] The Times 17 July 1917, p.3. (Maude Roythen)
[2] The Times, 31 August, 1914, p.4.
[3] Albert Marrin, The Last Crusade: The Church of England in the First World War. p. 179.
[4] Kevin Christopher Fielden, “The Church of England in the First World War.” (2005). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1080. http://dc.etsu.edu/etd/1080
[5] Hugh McLeod,. Religion and Society in England, 1850-1914. p.20.
[6] Marrin, The Last Crusade. p. 12.
[7] Christian Times, 11 July 1914.
[8] Henry Newbold, War Trust Exposed, pp. 14–15.
[9] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 25.
[10] J.G. Lockhart, Cosmo Gordon Lang (1949) p. 246.
[11] Oxford Pamphlets, 1914-1915; To Christian Scholars of Europe and America; A Reply from Oxford to German Address to Evangelical Christians by Oxford Theologians.
[12] The Times 12 October 1914, p. 5.
[13] Arthur Marwick, The Deluge; British Society and the First World War, p. 33.
[14] The Times 16 March 1916, p. 9.

The Bryce Report … Whatever Happened To The Evidence?

The Bryce Report was a propaganda coup of the highest order. It was translated into 30 languages and dispersed across the globe by every British propaganda service. In the United States, the New York Times of 13 May 1915 ran Bryce’s ‘verdict’ on three full pages, over twenty-four columns, with pictures and unequivocal headlines. A measure of their clear success may be derived from the opening passage which began by stating that

‘Proofs of the atrocities by the German armies in Belgium – proofs collected by men trained in the law and presented with unemotional directness after a careful enquiry are presented in the report…headed by Viscount Bryce, the famous historian and formerly British Ambassador at Washington’ [1]

With headlines that screamed ‘German Atrocities Are Proved’ and ‘Premeditated Slaughter in Belgium’, ‘Young and Old Mutilated’, ‘Women Attacked, Children Brutally Slain, Arson and Pillage Systematic’, ‘Countenanced by Officers’, ‘Wanton Firing of Red Cross and White Flag’, ‘Prisoners and Wounded Shot’, ‘Civilians Used as Shields’, the New York Times could hardly have bettered itself in supporting the allied cause.

However, the American Irvin Cobb, in Belgium in 1914 as a correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post, wrote:

‘I had been able to find in Belgium no direct proof of the mutilations, the torturing and other barbarities which were charged against the Germans by the Belgians …fully a dozen seasoned journalists, both English and American, have agreed with me, saying that their experiences in this regard had been the same as mine.’ [2]

Another American, lawyer Clarence Darrow, was similarly sceptical. In 1915 he visited France but was unable find a single eyewitness who could confirm even one of the Bryce stories. Increasingly unconvinced of the allegations that had apparently been substantiated by Bryce, Darrow announced he would pay $1,000 to anyone who could produce a Belgian or French boy whose hands had been amputated by a German soldier. He found none. [3]

War, any war, harbours atrocity, it goes with the territory. It must never be excused, but it happens. Far from Belgium the massive Russian army was invading East Prussia. The civil population in the region offered no resistance, but of the 2 million plus inhabitants, more than 866,000 were driven from their homes. Some 34,000 buildings were burned to the ground, 1,620 civilians murdered, and over 12,000 were sent to Russia as prisoners. [4] None of these atrocities were ever reported in the British or American press. Who cared, they were Germans after all.

The original basis for the atrocity stories from Belgium came in the first weeks of the war between 4 August and the start of September when raw German conscripts were met head-on by patriotic Belgians, military and civilian. Bryce recognised that ‘the invaders appear to have proceeded upon the theory that any chance shot coming from an unexpected place was fired by civilians.’ [5] No-one challenged that hostages were taken, buildings destroyed and groups of ordinary citizens executed. [6]

Nor can it be denied that a number of priests and teachers were executed or deported, Joseph Mercier, Archbishop of Malines, the most senior and powerful of the Belgian Catholic hierarchy quickly emerged as the national figurehead for the embattled population in occupied Belgium. He used his many contacts within the College of Cardinals to pressurise the German governor von Bissing to have his priests released from internment. Mercier wrote openly of the ‘massacre of 140 victims at Aershot’ [7] and stated in a letter to his German counterpart, Cardinal Hartmann of Cologne, dated 28 December 1914, that he ‘was personally acquainted with hundreds who have been victims…and am in possession of details that would make any fair minded man shudder’. [8] However, when he in turn was asked by the German governor to produce evidence concerning the alleged outrages committed against nuns, Mercier refused on the grounds that it would be too upsetting for nuns to be questioned, and much of what he had heard was given to him in due confidence. Governor von Bissing concluded, ‘it is enough to state now that neither your Eminence nor the other Bishops can provide any proof based on facts’. [9] But the stories of the rape of Catholic Belgium ran and ran.

Propaganda is so much more potent when laced with some truth. The rumours, opinions, exaggerated accounts and barrack-room stories were dignified by Viscount Bryce and his team as a true record. If we could refer back to the ‘evidence’ they used then perhaps the sceptic might be convinced. Unfortunately the names and addresses of all of the witnesses whose depositions were so carefully catalogued by lawyers have disappeared, as have the depositions. We don’t know how objective the questioning was or how many statements were the product of leading questions. We do know now that a great quantity of evidence was based on second or third hand information. In H.A.L. Fisher’s biography of Viscount Bryce, the Secret Elite historian claimed that the main body of the report had not been disproved, and each story should be considered true until proven false. Was the burden of proof against the German soldiers not the responsibility of Bryce and his committee? We will never know. Although they were originally placed in the vaults of the Home Office for safe-keeping, all of the proceedings of the enquiry were subsequently destroyed. But the damage done to the reputation of the German army, and the subsequent increases in volunteer enlistment in Britain, was priceless.

[1] New York Times, 15 May 1915.
[2] Irvin S Cobb, Paths of Glory, p 154.
[3] Thomas Fleming, The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I, as quoted in The Journal of History, http://hnn.us/articles/1489.html
[4] Verax, A Path to Justice and Reconciliation, p. 154.
[5] Report of the Committee on alleged German Outrages, 1915, p. 26.
[6] H C Peterson, Propaganda for War, p. 53.
[7] D J Cardinal Mercier, Cardinal Mercier’s Own Story, p 24.
[8] Ibid., p. 34.
[9] Letter from von Bissing to Cardinal Mercier, 20 April 1915, quoted in Cardinal Mercier’s Own Story, p. 109.

The Bryce Enquiry … But You Cannot Speak To The Witnesses

Of the milestones in the Propaganda war aimed at the heart of America, arguably the most devastating was the Bryce Report, the Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages [1] which examined the conduct of German troops in Belgium, the breaches in the rules of war, and the inhumanity perpetrated against the civilian population. Lurid stories of German atrocities came first hand from the many Belgian refugees who fled to Britain in August and September 1914 and filled newspapers of every political hue. None howled louder than the Northcliffe stable. On 12 and 17 August the Daily Mail railed against ‘German Brutality’, including the murder of five civilians corroborated by sworn statements from ‘witnesses’. Coming as it did when news from the front was scarce, such damning stories caught the public imagination and set it on fire. On 21 August, Hamilton Fyfe, a Northcliffe journalist who had served on The Times, wrote of ‘sins against civilisation’ [2] A sensational list of accusations filled the columns of The Times and the Daily Mail including the maiming of women and children, the bayoneting of wounded soldiers, women with their breast cut off, nuns raped, and with sickening surety on 18 September a photograph was published purporting to be that of an innocent Belgian father holding the charred stub of his daughter’s foot. [3] Backed by the evidence of civilian Belgian refugees and of British servicemen, these stories were spread across the world and did enormous damage to the German cause. Members of Parliament called for an official enquiry and a committee of the most eminent men in the realm was appointed on 15 December 194 by prime minister Asquith.

Belgian resistance to the German invasion in August 1914 was stubborn and brave. The Garde Civique (Civilian police) was certainly deployed in Louvain; innocent people lost their lives. [4] The Daily Mail correspondent, A.T. Dawe followed the German army in its drive from Aix-la-Chapelle to Brussels and reported that some of the civil population, urged on by the Mayor and Belgian officials, rained machine gun bullets on the German trains as they approached the station, and the church of St. Pierre, which overlooked the railway, was turned into a veritable fortress. [5] Sharp-shooters fired on German infantry from upper-floor windows and the street by street defence of towns and villages seriously threatened the invasion timetable. Reprisals followed, of that there was no question, but British newspapers outdid each other in reporting these as gross atrocities with mutilated and murdered children, ravished innocent women, executed priests and nuns and indiscriminate heinous crimes against nature itself.

Let us be absolutely clear. There were atrocities. The burning of Louvain, Andenne and Dinant was brutal. When they invaded Belgium in 1914, the German high command expected to sweep through the country with very little opposition. The German army was many times larger and stronger than the Belgian army, and the Germans thought that any resistance by Belgium would be futile. The strength of Belgian resistance came as a surprise, and disrupted the German timetable for advancing into France [6] This in turn led to exaggerated suspicions among German commanders of Belgian civilian resistance. The Germans responded harshly to all perceived acts of resistance. By the time that the German army marched through Brussels on 20 August, its progress had been disgraced by a savage and at times indiscriminate severity against the civil population. In several villages and towns, hundreds of civilians had been executed. Many buildings were put to the torch. Priests thought guilty of encouraging the resistance were killed. The essential German objective was to insure that they did not have to leave a strong force to guard their lines of communication or an exposed rear by a policy of Schrecklichkeit, [7] literally, terror. The atrocities were shocking and cannot be excused, but the manner in which they were grossly exaggerated beyond credibility stands testament to the power of propaganda.

The chairman of prime minister Asquith’s official enquiry, Viscount Bryce, had from 1907-13 been Britain’s most popular Ambassador to the United States, a personal friend of President Wilson, twice the principle guest of the Pilgrims of America and from 1915-17, President of the British branch of the Pilgrims. He was assisted by three eminent lawyers and H.A.L. Fisher, the historian and member of the inner-circle of the Secret Elite, [8] who at that point was Vice-chancellor of the University of Sheffield. His connections to Milner dated back to South Africa and the Kindergarten and H A L Fisher enjoyed a stellar career linked intrinsically to his Oxford/Milner connections. The final member, Harold Cox was editor of the Edinburgh Review and proved somewhat difficult to control. He was not one of the ‘group’.

The Committee was specifically asked ‘to consider and advise on the evidence collected…as to outrages alleged to have been committed by German troops during the present war’ and to prepare a report for the government on the conclusions they drew from the evidence. [9] The impression given was that this illustrious committee of very experienced and trustworthy gentlemen had examined 1,200 witnesses from whose evidence around 500 statements had been included in the report along with extracts from 37 diaries taken from dead German soldiers and eye witness reports from British soldiers. This was simply not the case. They spoke to no member of the Commission.

The process was as follows. In September 1914 the prime minister requested that the Home Secretary and the Attorney General collect evidence of accusations of inhumanity and outrage carried out by German troops in Belgium. Most of the accusations came from Belgian witnesses, some military, but most civilians from the towns and villages through which the German army had advanced towards the French border. More than 1,200 depositions had been taken, not by, but under the supervision of the Director of Public Prosecution. The work involved ‘a good many examiners’ who had some legal knowledge but no authority to administer an oath. This had been going on for ‘three or four months’ before the committee was appointed. [10] The task they were given was to sift through thousands of pages of testimony, given freely, but not under oath, and decide what should or should not be included in a final report. While they were able to speak with and ‘interrogate’ the ‘lawyers’ who took down evidence from the witnesses, [11] they were not allowed contact with any witnesses themselves.

Harold Cox was particularly displeased with the arrangement. He wanted to re-examine some of the witnesses and forced Bryce to allow the committee to question the legal teams involved in taking the depositions. Indeed, without his intervention, the preface to the report would not have mentioned the fact that they had not spoken to a single witness in person. Almost every account that was put on record had already appeared in the national newspapers but by being included in the final report, they gained authenticity. The esteemed gentlemen had read the ‘evidence’ and confirmed its veracity. The quasi legal nature of the Committee, the trappings of procedure and due process, the presence of an eminent Judge, Sir Frederick Pollock, the wording which talked of corroboration of evidence, lawyers, cross-examination, testimony, the Courts of England, the British Overseas Dominions and the United States, witnesses and conviction [12] allowed the report to assume the status of a profound judgement from the High Court of Judiciary. It was nothing of the sort.

The conclusion read as the charge sheet of ultimate villainy. It was designed to. The decision of the pseudo-court to which Germany had no appeal, was that in many parts of Belgium deliberate and systematically organized massacres of the civil population, accompanied by many isolated murders and other outrages had taken place. That in the conduct of the war innocent civilians, both men and women, were slaughtered in large numbers, women violated, and children murdered. Looting and the wanton destruction of property were deemed to have been ordered by the officers of the German Army and they determined that elaborate provisions had been made for the systematic burning and destruction of towns and villages at the very outbreak of the war.

They pronounced that this destruction had no military purpose. They asserted that the international rules of war were frequently broken, particularly by the using of civilians, including woman and children, as a shield for advancing forces exposed to the fire, to a less degree by killing the wounded and prisoners, and in the frequent abuse of the Red Cross and the White Flag. Every charge was ‘proven’ guilty. In the penultimate paragraph the committee declared that all the charges were ‘fully established by the evidence’. [13] The only trapping that was missing from this judicial pantomime was the black cap. And the world believed, though not one word was actually heard from the witnesses.

[1] http://www.gwpda.org/wwi-www/BryceReport/bryce_r.html
[2] The Daily Mail, 28 August 1914.
[3] J Lee Thompson, Northcliffe, Press Baron in Politics, 1865-1922, p.231.
[4] Verax, Truth, A Path to Justice and Reconciliation, p.151.
[5] Ibid., pp.151-2.
[6] Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August, pp. 130-132.
[7] C R M F Cruttwell, A History of the Great War, p.16.
[8] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p 24.
[9] Warrant of Appointment, Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages, 1915, p2.
[10] Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages, 1915, pp. 3-4.
[11] Ibid., p. 7.
[12] Ibid., pp. 4-7.
[13] Ibid., pp. 60-1.